According to Senior Meteorologist Jason Nicholls, “El Niño played an important role in the low activity of the tropical season as tropical development flourished closer to Fiji and Vanuatu and away from Australia.” El Niño occurs when ocean water temperatures rise above normal across the central and eastern Pacific, near the equator which influences global weather patterns.

Could massive amounts of rainfall in Australia have deprived the Arctic of fresh water so there was less sea ice?

NSIDC: “Water from the Pacific Ocean and several rivers in Russia and Canada provide fresher, less dense water to the Arctic Ocean. So the Arctic Ocean has a layer of cold, fresh water near the surface with warmer, saltier water below. This cold, fresh water layer typically allows more ice growth in the Arctic than the Antarctic.”

NCAR: ” when three atmospheric patterns came together over the Indian and Pacific oceans, they drove so much precipitation over Australia in 2010 and 2011 that the world’s ocean levels dropped measurably.”